Sound Off for Sunday, March 16, 2014

On fire station: I watched Monday’s city council meeting, and I can’t understand why a city our size has to have an eight-bay station. I don’t know of any town our size that has one. If they want to cut costs, stay with four bays. We have the Milwaukee Street bridge project coming up. Who’s going to pay for that? They’re taxing us right out of our houses.

-- I thought the firefighters were supposed to save houses, not destroy them. I guess I’ve had it wrong all these years.

-- I lived in the area when No. 1 fire station was born. Two homes were acquired in order to build it. It was a great neighborhood, and the firefighters were the best of neighbors. To destroy 12 homes in order to build what is essentially a huge garage with offices and minimal living quarters is insane. I’ll never vote for a councilperson who goes along with this.

On plowing: Regarding the “Mario Andretti” comment in Sunday’s Sound Off, there are a lot of miles in this town. Those guys work many hours in a row to clear streets. If he didn’t get to your house until 4 p.m., he must not be the Mario Andretti you’re speaking of. The snow would end up in the driveway no matter if he plowed before you shoveled or afterward.

-- I just finished a business plowing job, and while sitting in the parking lot, a guy pulls up with a van with 3 or 4 inches of snow all over it and starts pulling off all the snow in the lot. I sat there, and he looked up at me twice with no respect. I would love to go to this guy’s house and drop off a load of snow in his driveway.

On Milton principal: Goodbye and good riddance, Principal Smith. You have no business running a school, no business in a teacher’s classroom and most certainly no business around children. If you and all other administrators were actually paid to think, you would all be working for nothing.

On Gazette: Regarding the newspaper awards, if the judges from Kansas had to wade through the daily morass of mistakes in grammar, spelling, style, facts and judgment that The Gazette delivers to its readers, they would have awarded the paper not prizes but permanent banishment from the contest.

-- A brief on Page 10A March 9 was about “Church plans soup, bread meals.” The last paragraph says ‘The Lent season will start with a traditional Ash Wednesday service at noon March 5.” I was thinking I’m reading this wrong because the date of the newspaper is March 9. That sentence should have been eliminated. I don’t know who is editing it.

On minimum wage: Regarding Tuesday’s editorial, another way of looking at the evidence cited is that employers are so stupid they will hold onto nonproductive employees if the wage is not raised and will not hire more if they cannot supply the demands of buyers if it is. Ask every waitress about this raise within a year of hiring. What transparent twisting of facts.

On Paul Ryan: After listening to his speech at CPAC, I think Paul Ryan is the one with a full belly and an empty soul.

On gas prices: In Janesville, gas prices are going up five, 10 cents at a time. The national average was $3.48. We were at $3.64, $3.69. Even in Milwaukee, they were at $3.48. It just doesn’t make any sense, and I’m wondering if anybody had an answer for that.

On low-income students: Forty-nine percent of the school district’s children are low income (Page 1A, Wednesday). No surprise when disposable income is eroding. Local elected officials are driving this percentage upward through a constant campaign of raising service fees and taxes.

On good Samaritan: Many thanks and a big hug to the gentleman who found my purse outside in the cart and returned it to Kmart on Friday, March 7. I’m ever so grateful. Also thanks to the two women employees who helped me try and find you, thinking you were still in the store.

On interchange: Time for Wisconsin to start building again, and if that means adding an interchange near Milton so future factories can access the Interstate and the railroad line, then Janesville and Milton should partner with Bill Watson and Rock County 5.0 to make it happen.

On streetlights: With all the burned-out streetlights in Janesville, we’re beginning to look a lot like Detroit. Don’t we have a city maintenance department that could take care of this?

-- I made two calls about burned-out lights on the 1300 block of East Memorial Drive, and no results. For safety reasons, this should be taken care of. If the city manager or a councilmember lived on this block, it would be taken care of immediately. It’s very dark at night. People are walking their dogs, and someone fell the other night.